Hunting and the Quest for Power:

The James Bay Cree and Whitemen
in the 20th Century

by

Harvey A. Feit

[The following presentation
initially appeared as a chapter in Native Peoples: The Canadian Experience,
(2nd ed. 1995), edited by R. Bruce Morrison and C. Roderick Wilson and published
by McCelland & Stewart. It is reprinted here (in three parts) with permission
of the copyright holders.]

Introduction

This chapter has been called "Hunting
and the Quest for Power" 1 because
it is about different quests for power and how they have interacted in the recent
history of the James Bay region of northern Quebec. The key terms of this title
are ambiguous; hunting means different things to the Cree than it does for other
Canadians, and so, too, with power. The quest for power is a metaphor the Cree
might use for the life of a hunter; it is also a metaphor Euro-Canadians might
use for the goals of both northern developers and government bureaucracies.

The James Bay Cree region lies to
the east and southeast of James Bay and southeast of Hudson Bay. It has been
inhabited by the James Bay Cree since the glaciers left about 5,000 years ago.
The Cree now number some 12,000 people and live in nine distinct settlements
from which they hunt approximately 375,000 square kilometres of land. (The word
"Cree" in this chapter refers specifically to the James Bay Cree.)

I visited the region first in 1968
when I began my doctoral research on hunters of the Cree community of Waswanipi.
My interest in hunting arose from a concern for the relationships between Western
societies and their environments. I had read often in the human ecology literature
that Indians had a different relationship with nature, but I found the literature
vague and somewhat romantic in its account. I thought an "on the ground"
study of Cree/environment relationships could help revise the popular images
of Indians as ecological saints or wanton over-exploiters and could develop
a practical understanding of the real accomplishments and limitations of one
Indian group's approach. I think I was able to partially accomplish this goal,
but with Cree tutelage and encouragement I also learned things I had not foreseen.
These are probably best described as lessons in the sacredness of the everyday
and the practicality of wisdom.

When the Cree began their opposition
lo the James Bay hydroelectric scheme in 1972, they asked if I would present
some of the results of my research to the courts and then use them in the negotiations.
It was an unexpected happenstance that my study proved to be of some use to
the Cree, and one for which I was thankful. I served as an adviser to the Cree
organizations during the negotiation and implementation of the James Bay and
Northern Quebec Agreement, regularly from 1973 through 1978, and on an occasional
basis thereafter. This took me into a new set of interests in the relationship
of the Cree to the government and toward a deeper interest in Cree history.
The results of some of these experiences are described in the latter parts of
this chapter.

Part I:

The Contemporary Cree Hunting
Culture

Cree Hunting Culture and Knowledge

An early ethnographer of the Eastern
Subarctic, Frank G. Speck, called Indian hunting a "religious occupation."
Several recent ethnographers have called it a culturally distinct science, an
"ethnoscience." How can we understand Cree hunting, a way of life
whose destruction would cause not only an economic and social crisis but a cultural
and moral crisis as well? To answer such questions we must try to understand
what meanings hunting has for the hunters themselves.

We can develop an understanding
of how the James Bay Cree think about hunting and about themselves and their
world by considering the different meanings conveyed by the Cree word for hunting.
We will find that their concept of hunting is very different from the everyday
understandings common in our own culture. However odd the Cree conception may
appear to be at first, we will find that it not only has logic when understood
in the context of Cree thought and action, but also that it has important affinities
with the recent discoveries of ecological scientists working within our own
culture. These analogies may help us to better understand Cree thought, although
they will not make the Cree out to be scientists or transform scientists into
effiective hunters.

ANIMAL GIFTS

Nitao, the root of the
Cree term that is roughly translated into English as "hunting, fishing,
and trapping in the bush," is found in a series of words related to hunting
activities. At least five basic meanings are associated with this root term
for hunting: to see something or to look at something; to go to get or to fetch
something; to need something; to want something; and to grow or continue to
grow.

That hunting should be thought of
as a process of looking or seeking is apparent to us as well as to the Cree.
Hunting is typically a process of seeing signs of the presence of animals -
tracks, spoor, feeding or living areas - and of then seeking to encounter the
animals and to kill them. The proposition that hunting is "looking"
emphasizes the uncertainty involved. The Cree view is that most animals are
shy, retiring, and not easily visible, and hunting therefore involves an expectation
as well as an activity. The hunter goes through a process of finding indications
of possible encounters with animals; if the hunt is successful he fulfils his
anticipation. We will see below how this anticipation plays a role in Cree thinking.

That a successful hunt should also
be conceptualized as getting or fetching animals is also apparent, but part
of what the Cree mean by this is different from what we would assume. To get
an animal in the Cree view does not mean to encounter it by chance, but to receive
the animal. The animal is given to the hunter. A successful hunt is not simply
the result of the intention and work of the hunter; it is also the outcome of
the intention and actions of the animals. In the process of hunting a hunter
enters into a reciprocal relationship: animals are given to hunters to meet
their needs and wants, and in return the hunters incur obligations to the animals.
Thus the Cree conception of hunting involves a complex and moral relationship
in which the outcome of the hunt is a result of the mutual efforts of the hunter
and the environment. This is a subtle and accurate ecological perspective. It
may seem odd that animal kills should be conceptualized as gifts, and it is
important therefore to note that Cree do not radically separate the concepts
of "human" and "animals." In their everyday experience in
the bush they continually observe examples of the intelligence and will power
of animals. They express this by saying that animals are "like persons";
they act as if they are capable of independent action, and they are causally
responsible for things they do.

For the Cree this is an everyday
observation. Evidence of intelligence is cited from several sources. One type
is that each animal has its own way of living or, as is sometimes said, its
own way of thinking. Each responds to environmental circumstances in ways that
human beings can recognize as logically appropriate. Each has its own preparations
for winter: beavers build complex lodges; bears, dens; ducks and geese migrate.
Each also relates to, and communicates with, members of its species. For example,
beavers establish three-generational colonies built around a monogamous couple.
Geese mate for life and have complex patterns of flock leadership. And inter-species
communication is indicated by the intelligent response of animals to the efforts
of the hunters themselves. Some beaver will place mud on top of a trap and then
eat the poplar branches left as lure and a gift by the hunter. Hunters say their
techniques have to depend on how fast an animal thinks. Each animal has special
mental characteristics: beaver are stubborn and persistent, bear are intelligent,
wolves are fearless, grouse are stupid. Further, animals have emotions and may
be "scared" or "mad" when they avoid hunters.

That animals give themselves is
indicated in part by their typical reactions to hunters. When a bear den is
found in winter, a hunter will address the bear and tell it to come out. And
bears do awake, come out of their dens sluggishly, and get killed. That such
a powerful, intelligent, and potentially dangerous animal can be so docile is
significant for the Cree. The behaviour of moose is also significant. Moose
bed down facing into the wind, so that air does not penetrate under their hair.
When a hunter approaches from down wind, he comes upon it from behind. A moose
typically takes flight only after scenting or seeing a source of danger. It
therefore rises up when it hears a hunter approach and turns in the direction
of the noise to locate and scent the source. In this gesture, taking ten to
fifteen seconds, the moose gives itself to the hunter by turning and looking
at him.

The extensive knowledge Cree have
of animals becomes, therefore, a basis for their understanding that animals
are given. The concept of an animal gift indicates that killing an animal is
not solely the result of the knowledge, will, and action of humans, however
necessary these are, but that the most important reasons for the gift lie in
the relationships of the givers and the receivers. Because animals are capable
of intelligent thought and social action, it is not only possible for them to
understand human beings, but for humans to understand animals. The actions of
animals are events of communication that convey information about intentions.
Saying that the animals are gifts therefore emphasizes that the hunter must
adapt his hunt to what he learns from and knows about the animals. To see how
this works we must examine the Cree world.

THE HUNTER'S WORLD

Because animals are gifts, it is
appropriate to ask "Who gives the animal?" and the answer to this
question leads us to important features of Cree logic and cosmology. Recurrent
answers are that animals do not only give themselves, they are given by the
"wind persons" and by God or Jesus.

Just as animals are like persons,
so, too, are phenomena that we do not consider to be living. Active phenomena
such as winds, water, as well as God and various spirit beings, are all considered
to be like persons or to be associated with personal beings. And because all
sources of action are like persons, the explanations of the causes of events
and happenings are not in terms of impersonal forces, but in terms of the actions
of one or more persons. Explanations refer to a "who" that is active,
rather than to a "what" (Hallowell, 1955; Black, 1967). The world
is therefore volitional, and the perceived regularities of the world are not
those of natural law but rather like the habitual behaviour of persons. It is
therefore possible to know what will happen before it does occur, because it
is habitual. But there is also a fundamental unpredictability in the world as
well: habits make action likely, not certain. This capriciousness is also a
result of the diversity of persons, because many phenomena must act in concert
for events to occur. The world of personal action is therefore a world neither
of mechanistic determination nor of random chance: it is a world of intelligent
order, but a very complex order, and one not always knowable by men. The Cree
world of complex interrelationships is analogous to that of some ecological
scientists, although the scientists use an organic rather than a personal metaphor.

For the Cree, the relationship of
the wind persons to animal gifts is constantly confirmed by everyday experience.
The wind persons bring cold or warmth and snow or rain, and with the coming
and going of predominant winds the seasons change. They are responsible for
the variable wealher conditions to which animals and hunters each respond. The
bear hibernates and is docile only in winter when the north wind is predominant.
The geese and ducks arrive with the increasing frequency of the south wind and
leave with its departure. In a myriad of other ways, the animals and hunters,
and the success ol the hunt, depend in part on the conditions brought by the
winds.

Each of the four wind persons resides
at one of the four points of the compass, and each has specific personal characteristics
related to particular seasons, weather and animal patterns, hunting conditions,
and success. When a hunter is asked by young men and women who have been away
to school why he says that the animals are given by the winds, he often answers
that they must come and live in the bush to see for themselves. It is demonstrated
in the daily and yearly experience of the hunters, and it can be shared with
anyone who will spend enough time in the bush.

Parallel discoveries of the relationships
of animals, weather, and hunting can be found in hunting lore in our own society.
But whereas this knowledge plays a role in our culture of hunting, scientists
have devoted limited research effort to it. By contrast, such relationships
are centrally important in Cree hunting practice, and they are encoded and highlighted
by Cree concepts and in what we might call their science of hunting.

The concepts of the wind persons
mediate and link several series of ideas that serve to order the Cree world
in space and time. The wind persons are said to live at the four corners of
the earth, thereby orienting space on a four-point compass. The wind persons
also link God to the world. They are part of the world "up there,"
but they affect the earth down here. They thus link the spirits and God who
are up there to the men and animals who live their lives on the earth.

"God" and Jesus are the
ultimate explanation for all that happens on this earth, but He2
also gives all the personal beings of the world intelligence and will in order
to follow His Way, or abandon it. God alone gives and takes life, but beings
are ultimately responsible for their actions. God therefore plays a key part
in the gift of animals to hunters, but only a part. He is the leader of all
things, and He is assisted by the wind persons and a hierarchy of leaders extending
to most spirits, animals, and humans. The idea of leadership is persuasive in
the Waswanipi world, and the hierarchy of leaders is spoken of as one of power.
Hunting therefore depends not only on the hunter and the animals, but on an
integrated chain of leaders and helpers acting together to give and to receive
animals.

In this chain, human beings fit
somewhere in the middle range, closely linked to those both above and below
them. Human beings are mutually dependent on animals, who are generally less
powerful than humans, and on spirit beings, who are generally more powerful.
But the linkages are close and the positions flexible. As Cree myths indicate,
some of the less powerful spirit beings were formerly human beings who have
been transformed into spirits. Animals themselves used to be "like us,"
and in the "long ago" time of the legends they could talk with one
another and with humans.

THE POWER OF HUNTING

The power of God and humans is manifest
in the relationship between thought and happenings in the world. What God thinks
or knows happens; His thought is one with happenings and thus He is all powerful.
Spirit beings participate in this power to a lesser degree; they know only some
of what will happen in the future or at a distance. Their thought and happenings
frequently coincide. God and spirit beings may give their powerful knowledge
to humans in dreams and in thoughts, and by signs in the world, but they never
tell all that humans would like to know. People can often be said to "discover"
their understandings rather than create them; and thought or insight may "come
to us" as a gift from God and spirits, in waking thought or in dreams.
Thinking and prayer may be one. The knowledge that spirits give anticipates
the future with some real - but always unknown - degree of certainty.

Humans not only differ from animals
by the degree of power they receive, but also from each other. Powerful and
effective knowledge increases with age and with the care and attention individuals
give to interpreting and cultivating their communications with God and spirit
beings. These differences in power and wisdom are reflected in the patterns
of leadership within human communities.

The meaning of power in the Cree
perspective, therefore, differs in important ways from our own. We typically
think of power as the ability to control others and/or the world. For the Cree
it is more complex. Human knowledge is always incomplete, and there is often
a gap between what humans think and what actually happens. In hunting, for example,
a hunter will frequently dream of an animal he will be given before he begins
to look for it. He may then go out hunting and find signs of that animal that
confirm his expectation. When the things he thinks about actually come to be,
when he is given the animal, that is an indicator of power. But humans never
find that all they anticipate comes to be. The power is a coincidence between
an internal state of being (thought) and the configuration of the world (event),
a congruence anticipated by the inner state and that this anticipation helps
to actualize. Both the thought and the event are social processes. Power is
not an individual possession, it is a gift, and a person cannot in this view
bring his thought to actuality by individually manipulating the world to conform
to his desires. And, at each phase of happenings in the world, humans, spirit
beings, and other beings must sensitively interpret and respond to the communications
and actions of the other beings around them. "Power" is a relationship
in thought and action among many beings, whereby potentiality becomes actuality.
Hunting is an occasion of power in this sense, and the expression of this is
that animals are gifts, with many givers. Power in this Cree sense may have
analogies to our concept of truth, i.e., thought that comes to be. We might
say that power is truth unfolding, rather than that power is control.

This complex understanding of hunting
links intimately with basic Cree attitudes toward human life itself. The symbols
conveying Cree concepts of hunting also order the Cree understanding of the
life and death of animals and of the hunters themselves. The life and ultimate
death of both the hunted and the hunters are as enigmatic for the Cree as they
are for us. That humans should have to kill animals to feed themselves and their
families in order to live and that humans themselves all die are fundamentally
mysterious features of life. Both animals and humans participate in the mystery
of death, and Cree symbols of hunting elaborate the mystery and bring the wonder
of life and death into the world of everyday meanings.

The hunt is conceptualized as an
ever-changing cycle at many levels. If a hunter is successful he will bring
game back to his camp. Having received a gift, the hunter is under obligation
to respect that gift by reciprocating with gifts of his own. These gifts go
partly to other Cree, as most large kills are shared with kinsmen, neighbours,
or with the community. By giving meat to others they are said to find more animal
gifts themselves in return. The hunter also reciprocates to the spirits who
have participated in the hunt, often by placing a small portion of the meat
into the stove at the first meal of each day, so the smoke of the gift can go
up the stove pipe as a sign of appreciation and respect to the spirits "up
there." This return offering is part of an ongoing relationship of reciprocity:
it not only expresses respect and repays an obligation, it continues the exchange
as a statement of anticipation that the hunter will again receive what he wants
when he is again in need. Many Cree rituals follow a similar structure.

Hunting is conceptualized as an
ongoing process involving a delicate and ever-changing balance. When bad luck
occurs, hunters turn their attention to other species, or they hunt in another
area until the animals are ready to be caught again. If animals want to be caught
and are not hunted, they have fewer young and more easily succumb to diseases
or predation. Thus, proper hunting can lead to increases in the numbers and
health of the animals. However, if a hunter kills animals that are not given,
if he overhunts, then the spirits of that species will be "mad," and
the hunter will have no luck. Thus, in hunting, the life and death of animals
form a delicate reciprocal process.

The alteration in hunting luck brings
us to the last of those meanings of the word ''hunting.'' Hunters say that when
they decrease their hunting they do so in order that the animals may cease being
mad and may grow again. Hunting involves a reciprocal obligation for hunters
to provide the conditions in which animals can grow and survive on the earth.
The fullilment of this responsibility provides the main criterion by which hunters
judge one another. In everyday conversation people speak extensively about the
reputations and actions of other hunters. What is emphasized is hunting competence
(Preston, 1975). A hunter who masters a difficult skill and through his ties
with spirits receives hard-to-get gifts exhibits his competence and participates
in power. Men and women who are respected for their exceptional competence are
contrasted with those who take chances, who fool around with animals by not
killing them cleanly, and who seek self-aggrandizement by large kills or wasting
animals. The hunters who consistently have good luck but not excessive harvests
also demonstrate competence because they maintain that delicate balance with
the world in which animals die and are reborn in health and in continuing growth.

This image of the competent hunter
serves also as a goal of the good life. The aims of both hunting and of life
are, in part, to maintain a continuing sensitivity to and a balanced participation
with the world, in which humans and animals reciprocally contribute to the survival
of the other. The aim of life is the perpetuation of an ordered, meaningful,
and bountiful world. This aim includes those now alive and those yet to be born.
The social universe thus extends beyond the human world, beyond the temporal
frame of an individual human life. Such a life leads from an awareness of the
mystery of everyday life to the mystery of death, through competencc to participate
in power.

Hunting is not just a central activity
of the Cree, nor is it simply a science or a formal ritual. Hunting is an ongoing
experience of truth as power.

Contemporary studies by anthropologists
of hunting and gathering peoples can be dated to the mid-1960s when it was "discovered"
that the hunting and gathering peoples of Africa and Australia were able to
efficiently, abundantly, and reliably produce their own subsistence. This came
as something of a revelation to both popular and professional images of hunting
life. The hunting way of life was often thought to be precisely the opposite
- inefficient, impoverished, and unpredictable. Following these findings, studies
of the Cree tended to confirm the application of the new view to Subarctic hunters
as well, although with some qualifications.

It was found that the hunters do
not encounter game on a haphazard basis but that they carefully plan and organize
their hunting activities. Hunting is organized into an annual cycle of activities
so that each species of game is used at times likely to produce an efficient,
abundant, and reliable supply of food.

Cree hunters know how to kill moose
at almost any season of the year, but they tend to concentrate their hunting
activities at several specific periods during an annual cycle. One period is
during the fall mating period or rut, when moose call to attract partners and
when they typically feed and drink in the mornings and evenings along the shorelines
of streams and lakes. Cree hunters often look along the shores for signs indicating
the places that moose have visited; they then wait or return at appropriate
times to call the males to the location. After the rut, moose are not hunted
extensively until snows have accumulated to significant depths. As the snow
depth increases, the widely dispersed populations progressively concentrate
and are often found on the hills where wind blows some snow accumulations thin.
When the snow in the concentration areas exceeds one metre in depth, the moose
tend to restrict their movements to a series of trails. Under these conditions
moose move outside the trails reluctantly. If the moose do take flight, hunters
on snowshoes can exhaust there by pursuit, until they stand their ground, face
the hunter, and give themselves to him.

A third period of intensive moose
hunting occurs in late winter when snow may melt and form a crust. The moose
may be able to walk, breaking through the crust with each step, but if they
run they tear the skin and tendons of their legs against the jagged edges of
the crust. Again, they will often stand their ground and face the hunter.

Cree moose-hunting practices therefore
depend on extensive knowledge of the actions of animals in relation to weather,
habitat, and the actions of men. Hunting is concentrated on the occasions when
moose most clearly give themselves to the hunters and when men can best fulfil
their obligations to the moose by killing the animals efficiently and with a
minimum of suffering.

As we would expect, the proficiency
and knowledge of Cree hunters make their hunting quite reliable. They succeed
on about 22 per cent of the days they search for moose, 88 per cent of days
spent fishing, and about 50 per cent of days hunting beaver. The efficiency
of the various activities was also substantial. The efficiency ratios for moose
hunting run from 25:1 to 40:1 - each day of moose hunting provides food for
twenty-live to forty active adults for one day, or for a family of four for
one to two weeks. Beaver hunting returns average 7: 1, and fishing, 4:1. Overall,
Cree winter hunting activity efficiencies average 7:1. Bush food provides hunters'
families with 150 per cent of the calories they require, and it provides eight
times the daily protein requirement. It also provides more than twice the required
intakes of the nine other vitamins and minerals for which calculations could
be run. These hunters also took purchased food with them into the bush camps,
but the caloric value of bush foods produced was nearly four times greater than
the calories available from store food.

Half the food produced is circulated
in gift exchanges to kinsmen and friends back in the settlement, and some is
kept for later village consumption. Those who give receive back other gifts
of food, as well as gifts of other supplies and equipment. Bush food harvests
have been estimated in the 1970s to provide from 25 to 55 per cent of the yearly
energy needs of the various communities and at least 50 per cent of almost all
required nutrients.

THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF HUNTING
AND THE POWER TO MANAGE GAME RESOURCES

The Cree have a distinct system
of rights and responsibilities concerning land, resources, community, and social
relations - a system of land and resource tenure, and of self-governance. This
system provides a means with which the hunters can fulfill their responsibilities
to animals and spirits and contribute to the conditions necessary for their
mutual survival.

Cree society is organized around
principles of community, responsible autonomy, and reciprocity. The central
resources of land and wildlife are not considered to be owned because people
are born and die while the land continues. The land is passed on from previous
generations and will be transmitted to future generations. The land and the
animals are God's creations, and, to the extent that humans use or control them,
they do so as part of a broad social community united by reciprocal obligations.
These gifts and obligations are not solely individual; they involve the wider
human community as well, so that all people have a right of access to land and
resources to sustain themselves. This right extends to all Cree, and to others
as well, but along with the rights go responsibilities to contribute to the
continued productivity of the land and animals. The exercise and fulfilment
of such responsibility require knowledge and a subtle responsiveness to the
relationships with animals and spirits and imply a willingness to exercise self-control
and participation in a community of responsibility.

Map 1. Approximate Territory of
James Bay Cree Hunters

The Cree are efficient enough at
hunting that they could deplete the game. Regulation is both an individual and
a community responsibility and is assisted through a system of stewardships.
All the land on which they hunt is divided into territories that are under the
stewardship of elders. The approximately 300 territories vary in size from about
300 to several thousand square kilometres, each supervised by a steward (see
Map 1). They are part of larger blocks, each associated with a particular Cree
community. While rights to land and resources are distributed to the community
as a whole, as a continuing society extending over generations, the stewards
exercise authority over the territories in the name of the community and the
common interest. The steward's authority is, in principle, spiritually sanctioned,
thus obligating him to protect and share the resources.

In general, all members of a community
have the right to hunt on any land on a short-term basis, while travelling through,
while camping for brief periods, or while using small game or fish resources.
However, extended and intensive use of the larger game resources is generally
considered to be under the supervision and approval of the stewards.

Stewards generally grow up in a
territory on which they hunt repeatedly over many years before they take over
their role. During this time they build up extensive ties with the spirits of
the land and acquire a vast knowledge of its resources. They are constantly
aware of the changing conditions of the game populations. They note changes
in the frequency of signs of moose, the numbers yarding together, the rates
of twin births, and age and sex ratios. For beaver, they note changes in the
number and size of colonies, size of litters, and the frequency of abandoned
or new colonies. They can easily discuss these trends with an outsider, comparing
present conditions with those of last year, the year before, or five years ago.

These trends are important to the
stewards, and they discuss them with other stewards and elder hunters, comparing
patterns in different territories and relating them to changes in weather, vegetation,
and hunting activity. Some of the trends observed by the stewards are the same
ones used by wildlife biologists to monitor game populations, although few biologists
have such long-term and detailed knowledge. The trends are also important because
they are communications from animals and spirits. Thus, if too many animals
were killed in the past, the animals would be "mad" and have fewer
young or make signs of their presence harder to find. This would indicate that
the animals wish to give fewer of themselves, and, out of reciprocal respect,
the hunters will take less than in the past.

The stewards use their knowledge
to direct the intensive hunting of the animal populations on their territories.
Each steward has the right to decide if the hunting territory will be used intensively
in any season, how many and which people can use it, how much they can hunt
of each key species, and where and when they can hunt. The stewards do not exercise
these powers in an authoritarian manner. The responsibility of each hunter is
assumed, and each is given respect and considerable autonomy. Stewards usually
act by suggestion and by non-personal public commentaries on the situation,
and their knowledge, their spiritual ties to the land, and the sacred sanctions
for their statements give them considerable influence.

The system is part of the network
of social reciprocities. At the individual level, a system of giving privileges
to hunters to join groups generally assures that each hunter has a place to
hunt each year. For the community as a whole, the system permits the distribution
of hunters and hunting to respond to the changes in the conditions of the game
populations.

Typically, each steward inherits
his position from a previous steward, and he has the duty to designate his successor.
This places each steward within a chain of responsible authority that extends
backwards and forwards. The land and animals are thus received also as gifts
from previous generations, and the present hunters view their own actions as
implying the same respect and responsibility to future generations.

In practice, the system of hunting-territory
stewardships works to maintain an ongoing balance between harvests and game.
This is generally possible for beaver and moose populations, and in some areas
for marten. The system can apply to fishing, but communities may instead limit
the numbers of fishing sites, the mesh sizes of the nets, and the length of
fishing seasons (Berkes, 1977). For goose hunting along the James Bay coast,
the Cree recognize adjacent groups of bays as goosehunting territories under
a "goose boss" who supervises a complex of hunting rules and restrictions
designed not to scare the migratory geese away prematurely but to encourage
their return on successive days and migrations (Scott, 1983).

Several studies supply quantitative
evidence that the Cree system does work for the moose, beaver, fish, and geese
populations, by keeping harvests below sustainable yields of the game populations.
The best indicator of success is the relative stability of the game populations
over the two decades during which estimates have been made. These data indicate
that the long-term ecological balance sought by the Cree is, in general, maintained
in practice. Furthermore, the Cree have been highly responsive to changing environmental
and historical circumstances in pursuing a balanced hunt.

Moose began migrating into the James
Bay region of Quebec only after vast forest fires swept the area in the last
decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of this century. The Cree
had hunting territories prior to this time, and indeed probably had them periodically
in the post-contact period and before the arrival of Europeans. The incorporation
of moose into the system, however, depended on the development of a sound body
of knowledge of moose behaviour and moose population dynamics and on creating
effective types of restraints on hunting. Such systems were developed in the
areas inhabited by dense moose populations between 1910, when the moose began
arriving, and the 1950s, when intensive studies of Cree hunting began.

The Cree system has also responded
to important demographic, technological, and economic changes. During this century
the Cree have generally maintained viable game populations through a period
in which numbers of Cree may have risen five fold. To increase their food production
they have intensificd and diversified their use of some game populations but
have also limited their bush food production to sustainable levels. They therefore
now have to purchase a proportion of their food.

The more intensive harvesting has
occurred with the aid of important additions to their technological repertoire,
including improved rifles and shotguns, new traps, and some new means of transportation.
But the use of this technology still depends on Cree knowledge, cultural values,
and social practices. The technology, therefore, has not led to over-hunting,
but rather to a more secure balance between men and animals. The Cree have also
maintained the balance despite periods of a shortage of cash. In such times
they have done without some trade goods rather than exhaust animal resources.
They have intentionally kept alive many traditional skills and crafts that could
replace certain trade goods should these become unavailable. And they have continued
to treat cash and trade goods as a socially modified form of property, using
them for co-operative ends by integrating their distribution and consumption
into the widespread reciprocal exchange practices.

The Cree have thus maintained their
hunting and the animals in their region despite important changes in their environment
and in historical circumstances. However, rare periods of breakdown in the balance
of men and animals have also occurred.

The most serious of these happened
in the 1930s, when beaver were severely depleted throughout much of northeastern
Canada. This has been variously attributed to epidemic disease, to Native over-hunting,
and to non-Native trappers. The reasons may never be known for all regions,
and they probably varied from one area to another. In the southernmost portion
of the Cree area, non-Native trappers, encouraged by high fur prices, entered
the region from the railway l00 miles to the south, trapped out one place, and
then moved on. Some of the Cree from this area say that they themselves trapped
out the beaver because they did not see the possibility of maintaining animal
populations if non-Native trappers continued to deplete their lands. It is significant
that the only species over-hunted in this area were beaver and maven, the ones
sought by non-Native trappers. Declining fur prices in the l930s and the concern
of the government for the ensuing plight of the Indians led to a closing of
the area to non-Native trappers and a recovery of the beaver under Cree supervision
between 1930 and l950.

This example emphasizes the limits
of the means at the disposal of the Cree for maintaining viable long-term balanced
relations with animals. Culture and social organization of the Cree are effective
aids for their self-governance, but they could not regulate or control the impact
of what outsiders do on their lands. Further, where outsiders did not act responsibly
and with respect, their activities threatened the animals and the Cree themselves.

The Cree recovered from the impact
of the intrusions of the twenties and thirties, but a crisis developed again
in the 1970s when the government of Quebec started to build a massive hydroelectric
project on their hunting lands. To understand the events of this second crisis,
we have to turn from an examination of Cree culture and hunting to an account
of Cree-white interactions.